


Questions and Answers

by FizzlingMatches



Category: Suicide Squad (2016)
Genre: Angst, Backstory, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-26
Updated: 2016-10-14
Packaged: 2018-08-11 04:07:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7875565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FizzlingMatches/pseuds/FizzlingMatches
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Oh, you have questions Dr. Quinzel?" The Joker pulled the words like they were taffy, about to snap from the strain. He rolled the 'z' of her name, watching how her shoulders tightened and eyes took on more of an alarmed glint. "I have questions too, hundreds of questions questions questions. But will there be any answers, answers, answers?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I

**Author's Note:**

> This is basically my take of the Joker's meeting with Dr. Harleen Quinzel, and how their feelings towards each other change into the relationship between the Joker and Harley Quinn. I hope you enjoy it, and thank you so much for reading!!!!

The boys were moving him today. That was new. The Joker smiled, watching how at barely even a slight glimpse of his platinum teeth, grown men twice his size flinched and squirmed. 

He had special plans to make them do more than just that.

The straitjacket chafed at his ribs, still bruised and sore from the most recent encounter he’d had with the Bat, not helped by the aggressive and eager meets with orderlies taking out rage in well-aimed punches and kicks to his torso and head. The buckles keeping thick straps of cloth in place were strained from the pressure he’d put upon them, trying without success to split away the binding material from his frame. He didn’t know where the strength he’d had went; only exhaustion pulled at his mind and limbs, rather than the ferocious energy that was normally locked inside of him.

The Joker had been confined to isolated hospital wards for the past three days, a new check up from the four weeks he’d been there prior, watching a candy shops’ worth of chemicals drip from an IV into his body, turning his muscles limp and his mind sluggish. The drum beat that was always a present hum in his mind, buzzing at his temples, the nape of his neck, the backs of his eyes, had been either diminished entirely or was pounding in his pulse points and turning his stomach. He dragged his feet down the dirty floor, watching diamonds tattoo themselves into the tiles, permanent until the cleaner came through.

Those diamonds would be there for quite a while.

“Where ya taking me?” He questioned a tall man, whose thick neck only highlighted how the veins stood out in answer. “Come on, answer me. I don’t bite,” he chortled out, a smirk tugging his lips into an already deranged smile. The man, Dexter, stiffened. 

“Tell that to Collins,” he replied gruffly, referencing the orderly who’d gotten a little too close to the Joker, thinking the drugs had already kicked into his system like a beating from the inside. He relished the memory of snapping his teeth around Collins earlobe, ripping and feeling a shower of blood on his face, the ruby red spray a familiar song whose lyrics were unforgettable. The scream bellowed from gasping lungs was sweet music, a drink to wash down the delicious sensation of warm liquid seeping into his pores, streaking down his face, leaving a filmy layer on his teeth, which he bared at the doctors that tripped over themselves in an effort to get away. Collins had gone limp, but not before he roared in vengeance and cracked his jaw.

“You’re going to see the new doc, Quinzel. They’re gonna poke in your head some more, see if they can figure you out,” he grumbled, clearly expressing that he believed there wasn’t anything to be done to the Joker. Was it because he was perfectly fine already, or did he think he was too far gone to pull back? 

Oh, questions questions questions. Another question was would there be any answers answers answers to the barrage of queries crashing at the edges of his brain, or would they just smash against the rocks to no avail?

“That Doc Quinzel’s a looker, huh Dex?” an orderly’s remark to the man wheeling him down the hall snapped the Joker out of his musings. Doctor Quinzel, so many questions he had about this doctor now. Roger, the man who’d spoken, was a hard one to figure out. A sudoko puzzle who didn’t have any filled-in blanks that was turned into a human being, that was what Roger was. Dexter was more of a crossword in a paper, but with a few scratched clues. He gave a hollow smile. Collins had been more of a tic-tac-toe game with a four year old - too bad none of them knew it. He wondered absently if he was going to ever get to trade blows with the two men, or they’d leave before that could happen.

“Eh, you know I don’t care too much about whether or not the new doc’s got looks,” Dexter replied, slowing his brisk walk down the hall to turn the wheelchair and the man seated within it into a room of interrogation. “Doc’s gonna be here in a minute, Clowny. Better make sure you look real sharp for em’, huh?” The two men snickered as they exited, not before giving him a swift punch to the already-sensitive ribs of his, and a cold cock to the fracture in his jaw. They returned swiftly, as if remembering how he was a high-risk patient that was not to be left alone, taking up stations behind him.

Doctor Quinzel, Doctor Quinzel, Doctor Quinzel. He played with the pronunciation in his mind, while his ribs ached and his jaw screamed, the fresh split of his flesh trickling blood down to stain the white of his neck and the already-grimy straitjacket. He hummed the ‘z’, pulled at the ‘l’. The mysterious Doctor Quinzel, here to cure him, or at least stare open-mouthed at him. Man or a woman, tall or short, loud or quiet, who was this Doctor Quinzel? Questions questions questions, to which he was still waiting for answers answers answers.

The door opened softly, the crack to the hallway allowing him to hear muted voices. The Joker shut his eyes, feeling the florescent lights glare bouncing around the room and shattering what had been only a quiet hum. The pounding returned, hammering and blaring behind his eyelids, screaming and shrieking. At least the IV had been removed, though their medications, none of which morphine, were still lingering in his arteries and veins, not yet washed out from his system. Soft clicks tapped at the tile floor, a lab coat swished.

“Hello,” a woman’s voice greeted him. “I’m Doctor Quinzel, and I’m going to be your psychiatrist for the time being.” He heard a breath being taken in quickly, as he tried to judge from the behind the blackness of his closed eyelids whether or not this was just a joke. Surely, surely this wasn’t who would be treating him? He was hoping for some stuck up older man who was trying to write a book and made money off of his famous name, or a med student who would squeak and then run out of the room at the sight of his green hair and silver teeth.

“What happened to him?” Doctor Quinzel’s voice turned from soft to sharp and angry, directed at the two orderlies that stood behind him, wilting in the heat of the interrogation room like flower petals at the end of their lives.

“He was being insubordinate.”

“My reports told me he has not acted out since the incident with Collins,” came a quick reply. There’s a tongue on her, the Joker noted with a smile in his mind’s voice. 

“Well ma’am, we’re only trying to keep the crazies under control, we can’t be expected to -“

“To treat our patients with an inkling of human decency?”

“He’s a murderer!”

“So is half of Gotham, Dexter. Please leave so I can treat the patient.”

“Can’t do that doc, we’re under strict orders not to leave him unsupervised.” The voice of Roger came, self important and leaving the Joker with a bitter taste of loathing settling on his tongue.

“And my presence here means he’s unsupervised?” The two men stopped short of whatever ‘witty’ response they’d cooked up. Oh, she was good, this Doctor Quinzel. “Leave the patient and myself here. There is a panic button, and I will use it if needed. So please exit the room, Dexter, Roger. My session with Mister Joker must begin.” A grumble came from the direction of the two men, heavy boots stomping into the floor with childish frustration at their clear dismissal. 

The door slammed shut, and the woman huffed out a sharp breath, clearly annoyed. He heard the chair opposite of him being pulled out, the hum in his mind lowering into quiet white noise.

“I’m very sorry about that, Mister Joker. I’ll speak to their supervisor about them being reassigned from you, as they clearly shouldn’t be at this job. I’ll clean up your wound in a moment,” she said, her voice already becoming the soft tone that he could recognize as her normal speech. “If you don’t mind, I do have a few questions for you.”

The Joker opened his eyes, watching baby blue and pupils pierce him in slight shock. He’d been there for four weeks, yet he hadn’t opened his eyes to any of the quacks trying to get a word out of him. Doctor Quinzel was a looker, that was sure - golden hair that fell long past her shoulders, blue eyes hiding behind glasses that surely weren’t prescription, lab coat covering the rest of her. She had pale skin, closer to his own than to most, but with a flush in her cheeks. She was young - much younger than he thought a psychiatrist could be, especially one treating a dangerous criminal.

"Oh, you have questions Doctor Quinzel?" The Joker pulled the words like they were taffy, about to snap from the strain. He rolled the 'z' of her name, watching how her shoulders tightened and eyes took on more of an alarmed glint. "I have questions too, hundreds of questions questions questions. But will there be any answers, answers, answers?"


	2. II

“Mister Joker, I’m not sure I understand what you’re asking. You have questions -“

“Hundreds and _hundreds_ of them,” he purred, interrupting Doctor Quinzel. “Shall we play a game, doc?”

“What are you suggesting?” she asked, applying a bandage to the gash on his face still seeping blood. He reacted on instinct to the light touch of her hands, dry calluses scraping his skin and eliciting a shiver from the Joker. Gauze pressed against his throat, wiping away blood. 

“A little game of question for a question, this for that, quid pro quo, you know. You have questions, I have questions, and we both have the answers. Are you game, doc?”

He watched her eyebrows furrow for a moment, the gears and cogs turning in that lovely head of hers. Baby blue eyes met his own, puzzlement shining off of them, as well as something else: insatiable curiosity.

“Okay,” she said slowly, a little smile tugging at the corners of her lips. “I’ll play a game with you, Mister Joker. Do you want to go first, or shall I?”

“Oh, by all means doc, you go first.” He kept the laughter bubbling up in his throat contained - couldn’t go scaring off the good doctor before it got really fun now, could he?

“Alright. What do you want me to call you during these sessions?” That was an unexpected question. He’d played this game before, tugging at heartstrings and minds to twist them, but the questions always started the same - why do you do what you do? What happened in your childhood? Or, most often - what’s your real name?Never what do you want to be called, what’s your _chosen_ name rather than given. Chosen names showed who someone really was, a given name was just letters stamped on to a birth certificate. What what _what_ should the good doctor call him?

“Oh, Mister Joker is _fine_ ,” he purred again, the low rumbling of his words shortening the distance between the two of them, becoming closer and closer. “Mister J, if you’d like.”

“Ok, Mister J. If that’s what you want.” He liked how she pronounced 'mister' as 'mistah', a slight Gotham accent pulsing behind the stiff facade of Doctor Quinzel and showing a life, a life he was determined to figure out.

“Now,” he said, leaning forward to stare deeper into the abysses that were her eyes. What to ask, what to ask, what to ask? “What’s your first name?”

“Harleen,” she answered promptly, still having not touched her clipboard and pen, a fresh page for notes clipped under the metal clamp. 

“Doctor Harleen Quinzel,” he said in a flourished voice, rolling the letters on his tongue, drawing the ’n’ in Quinzel out before letting the ‘z’ buzz at the roof of his mouth, letting the ‘l’ linger at his teeth. “That’s an unusual name.”

“Well, my parents were unusual people.” There, an answer to an unvoiced question. He could normally play these unknowingly given answers out, drawing conclusions from them that made psychiatrists squirm in their chairs, scribble furious notes and above all, avoid eye contact. 

“I’m going to guess you’ve heard the harlequin comparison before, haven’t you?” She nodded slightly, as his fingers traced unseen patterns within their enclosures of the straitjacket. “Interesting, interesting. Well doc, it’s your turn again.”

Doctor Quinzel paused, watching him inquisitively, like an art student observing a particularly tricky Jackson Pollock painting. “How much sleep did you get last night?” she popped off, light flickering in those strange eyes of hers.

Well, that wasn’t what he expected. Not at all.

“Twenty-seven sweet sweet minutes, doc,” the Joker said, remembering his dream fondly. He’d been given a pretty little revolver, all black and gold, the words ‘LOVE’ and ‘HATE’ carved into the barrel. With every shot he took, the word changed, flipping the meaning of each sent bullet. One for love, one for hate. One for hate, one for love. He’d make that revolver a dream come true once he got out of Arkham, he’d planned it so.

“Only twenty-seven minutes,” she murmured to herself, not a question. 

“My turn,” he breathed, only leaning closer and closer. The sharp edge of the buckle was digging into his diaphragm, pressing harder and harder as the table became more and more intimate with the straitjacket. “Why are you wearing fake prescription lenses?” Her mouth dropped open slightly, giving him a better view of straight white teeth, gleaming in the unnatural light of the florescents.

“They make me look smarter than I am,” she confessed, her fingers now tugging at a hangnail. “But it’s also because they make people take me more seriously.”

“No one takes doc seriously, huh? Well, if my word means anything, I take quite _seriously_ the doc in front of lil’ old me. She’s a firecracker, have you heard? Took down a couple of orderlies that weren’t bein’ too good to her patient, best doc I’ve ever had. And I’ve had forty-four docs, so I’d know.” Once the words left his mouth, he nearly winced. Why was he _comforting_ Doctor Quinzel? She could take care of her insecurities herself. The Joker dismissed his own words in his mind, keeping his focus on the woman sitting in front of him, and the pen that was still sitting on the table, untouched. 

“Well, thank you Mister Joker. That’s very kind of you to say.” Doctor Quinzel, no, _Harleen_ , Harleen suited her better, cleared her throat. “Do you know what medications you’re on?”

“Well, I know they hurt. That’s alright though,” he said, keeping his eyes on the pen. He was lying now, feigning ignorance of the drugs pulsing through his bloodstream and seeping through his skin. "I don’t mind when it hurts a little. None of em’ are morphine, am I right?”

“You’re not on any pain medications?” she asked, sounding angry. “That can’t be right.”

“Sure is doc,” he replied, pulling in air as he pushed out the words. “Something about detoxing my system, blah blah blah blah blah.”

“I’ll try and change that,” she whispered, her words getting quieter and quieter with every exchange they had. “It’s your turn.”

“You have an accent,” the Joker noted, watching how her eyebrows furrowed again. Harleen thought she could hide an accent, whether it was from him or the rest of the world, he didn’t know. But still, it made him smile, the idea of her hiding a secret. “Why do you pretend that you don’t?”

She huffed out a smile, tucking behind her ear a stray lock of golden hair, swinging and catching the artificial light like they were his own personal glowsticks in the daytime. “You see more about other people than most, did you know that Mister Joker? I hide my accent to sound - professional, I guess. People take a polished sounding psychiatrist with glasses more seriously than a no-lenses-needing woman from the wrong end of Gotham who got a happy little scholarship.” Harleen paused, taking off said glasses and dropping them into the briefcase that sat next to her chair, leather made and almost-definitely secondhand. 

“Well,” he drawled, liking how the gravel of his voice made the pulse of her snowy white skin flutter a little faster, the arteries visible from the harsh lighting. Huh. Maybe he’d get some of these lights down in his little rooms of fun when he got out. He made another mental note to get someone to do that soon. “Any part of Gotham is the wrong end, doc. Just depends how wrong your end was.” A smile curled her lips up, blood flushing the pale pink a little more. “It’s all you, doc.”

Harleen pursed her lips, tapping her finger against her bottom lip as she pondered. The Joker’s eyes locked onto that finger, long and pale, topped with a polish-less nail. Her eyes lit, as if inspired. “What did you dream about during those twenty-seven minutes of sleep you had last night?”

It was as if she’d forgotten about every question but the ones he’d never expect.

“My dear old dad, rest his soul uneasy,” he lied, pulling a fake story quickly, designed to make pity tug at her heartstrings. “He was taking me to whatcha-ma-call-it, kindergarten or somethin’. That never happened when I was a little kiddo though, not that I can remember more than five minutes worth of when I was a kiddo.” That was a lie too - he could remember plenty. He just couldn’t discern what was or wasn’t a real memory, designed by his little imagination to knock the cogs and coils out of place in his mind. “He gave me a real big hug and then drove away.” The Joker let his expression slacken from a face of sugary poison to sadness. “Then he was gone - got outta the car and got shot.” Harleen’s eyes widened, the black of her pupils threatening to swallow up that baby blue, making her look a little crazed. 

Oh, a crazy Harleen Quinzel - that’d be a sight.

“I’m sorry, Mister Joker. That sounds like a very vivid and emotional dream.” He let his shoulders rise and drop, keeping his head turned to the side but his eyes on hers.

“Well, it was certainly more entertaining than watching the fascinating walls of my cell.” Harleen smiled again, her lips flushing more from pale pink to the hue of a freshly-healed scar. The Joker tried to ignore how his heart raced a little bit more at her smile, almost forgetting how he’d lied to pull those heartstrings of hers. He didn’t like this, how his own heart was pounding fast, and there weren’t any drugs or lives painted with blood on asphalt to blame it on. That wasn’t natural, was it? He hoped it was whatever they’d pumped into his system, or the blah blah blah side-effects of the ‘detox’ they’d forced him on. No, he didn’t like how his heart was pushing blood faster and faster and how he was oddly aware of the twitches of his eyes.

“Mister Joker?” Harleen prompted, looking a little wary at his silence and now near-glare. He willed his expression back into whatever it’d been before, a little smile playing on his mouth, eyes twinkling with a devil inside. He’d made that face before to the psychiatrists and med-men, malicious intent stark on his features along with it, but this doc. This _doc_ , damn her - she was something else. “It’s your turn, unless you’d prefer we don’t continue to play.”

“No, no, no - just figuring out what what _what_ to ask next - my curiosity about Doctor Harleen Quinzel is _insatiable_ ,” he said quickly, feeling his words rumble in his chest and the ‘z’ of her last name becoming fast one of his favorite letters in the alphabet, ‘j’ still reigning supreme. “Will you drop your accent for me, just this once doc? Pretty pretty pretty pretty,” he said as she sighed while looking a little amused. 

“Sure,” she said in her thick Gotham accent, the cadence soaking into her words like blood - a tough stain to get out. She’d stopped him before he’d said the magic word, ‘please’ never leaving his tongue. He couldn’t help laughing, the sharp and professional Doctor Quinzel from the beginning of his session gone, a dead shadow to the full life that was Harleen Quinzel, no glasses, thick accent, quick wit and intoxicating eyes. “Just this once.”

“Don’t worry doc,” the Joker said, the giggles that bubbled out of him subsiding quickly. “It was just a one time thing, don’t worry. It’s your turn.”

“There’s only a few minutes left in our session,” Harleen replied. “Only enough time for one question, but you can ask your next when I see you in two days.” She tapped her bottom lip again, the pen and note-sheet next to her still untouched and glaringly blank. Dexter and Roger entered the room again, their heavy boots thumping into the floor, a loud intrusion. Dexter went to open his mouth again before the Joker sent him a little warning smile, showing just a hint of the shiny platinum teeth hiding in his mouth. Roger went to stand behind his chair, wrapping his hands around the handles and unlocking the wheels.

“Time’s up, Doctor Quinzel - we're moving the patient, whether you like it or not.” Dexter said roughly from his stance at the door.

She’d appeared not to have heard him, still deep in thought. Her eyes lit again, something in her mind like a lightbulb of inspiration, only this one had a faulty wire.

“This session, in your answers - did you tell the truth, Mister Joker?” Harleen asked, Roger already wheeling him out to the threshold. He’d paused in the chair’s movements, as if waiting for the answer too.

The Joker thought back, to his feigned ignorance to what medications he was on - of course he knew. Even if he was strapped to a bed of the hospital wing, he’d made sure to know whatever crap they’d decided to pump into his system. The lie about his dream, all fibs, not one kernel of truth in his words - not a single one. 

He had a choice in this answer - lie and keep lying, or tell the truth and more truth?

“No doc, I didn’t,” he said, the wheelchair starting its course back to his cell.

“Thank you Mister Joker,” Harleen said, still seated. Her voice held nothing - no accent, no emotion, nothing but the dictionary definition of her words.

The orderlies had traded shifts with two new ones, locked him back into his four blank walls and a cot, with a little slot in the heavy swinging door for food and a cold concrete floor before he said another word.

“You’re welcome doc.”


	3. III

“Blah blah blah blah,” he sang to the tune of a funeral march, listening to the uneasy breathing of the guard stationed outside, protected only by the drugs floating unwillingly through the Joker’s system and the thick steel door. He was all alone in the cell block, save for the guards and orderlies that shuffled down the hallway unwillingly, their steps always becoming either slow and mocking as they passed by the door or nearly nonexistent as they leapt past the room where the Clown Prince of Crime slept and stared at the walls, which constantly seemed to be closing in or shifting. 

They really needed to put the _fun_ drugs in his system, not this bullshit detox crap that was clogging up his arteries with unnecessary reminders that he was stuck (for now, at least) in a bleh-blah building of cinder blocks and cement, dust that barely moved, and flickering florescents.

Frost would get him out soon enough, the sooner the better. 

He let out a long sigh, hearing the guard shuffle uneasily again from the outside. He let out a soft chuckle, more malice than actual amusement. At least he could still scare the ever-loving life out of the disgusting scum that worked here, shoving him down hallways strapped to wheelchairs and gurneys with IV drips that threw more poison into his system to try and relieve the poison already there.

Didn’t they teach at those fancy doctor schools of their's that you can’t fix what’s already broke?

‘Course, he wasn’t speaking about himself. _His_ mind wasn’t broken, rather it was what should be thought of as a galactic treasure. He kept the scum out of his brain, and made whatever thoughts and ideas that ran through his brain and sunk through his skin and seeped out his pores, whatever lingered in his ‘little gray cells’ something worth being there. Something useful. Something real, something _worthy_ of lingering in his brain. He was, of course, the Joker - fear of Gotham, blood boiler, toxicity borne flesh and bone (though better flesh and bone than the rest of the flesh and bone that surrounded him). He couldn’t have just any old thoughts bumping into each other inside his precious mind. 

The tattoos and hair made him the image of the menace, but his mind made the outfit complete.

Maybe they taught _that_ at those fancy doctor schools.


End file.
